Slovakia Established Counter Terror, Extremism Police Unit

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Slovakia has established a new police unit to fight terrorism and far-right extremism, the prime minister said Wednesday.

Robert Fico, who introduced the new unit, said that he was glad that police can now “react to a new wave of extremism, a new wave of fascism” that has emerged in Europe and which is now beginning to appear “in full force even in Slovakia.”

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The unit has more than 100 elite officers and will also investigate the financing of terrorism and extremism.

Fico said that it wasn’t enough to react verbally to those who deny the Holocaust or celebrate the Nazi puppet state that Slovakia was during World War II.

He didn’t identify any groups by name, but Slovakia’s neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia has 14 parliamentary seats and openly admires war-time Slovakia.

On Wednesday, two lawmakers for the party failed to apologize at the request of parliament for their derogatory comments about Islam.

Milan Mazurek called Islam in a previous parliamentary session “a cruel, disgusting and inhuman political system,” while Stanislav Mizik said it is “a product of the devil.”